Fattitude

This blog starts with a prequalifying statement; I have never made any secret of the fact that I am overweight – it doesn’t weigh me down nor does it prevent me functioning as the Chief Executive of a charity that helps people who experience labour market disadvantage to maximise their potential to secure sustainable employment. It doesn’t prevent me functioning as a wife, mother and grandmother and it doesn’t get in the way of the other bits of being in a relationship with my significant other.

In fact whilst my weight does not define who I am, it does however for some create the need for some to prefix my name when describing me with the word “Big”. Now of course it could mean “big heart” “big giver to charity” “but I am astute enough to know that it’s my body size that gives me this additional tag.

Truth is I am big enough to stand my own corner and have long held the view that those who matter don’t mind and those who mind don’t matter. I absolutely cringe at those size acceptance websites and News Groups particularly those BBW sites and the men aka chubby chasers. I have been fat most of my childhood and all of my adult life and I never felt the need to stand in line like a link of sausages waiting to be picked by some chunky chipolata connoisseur – puts a whole new connotation on pan handler. I also never had the need to go in search of a man who would punch his weight with my rolls of fat; in fact my abundant beauty and my intelligence and wit proved to be an intoxicating mixture and had I been of the mind, I could have had both the men and the hot dinners.

I read today about the Facebook Group set up to ridicule a family that all happen to be overweight and the youngest of whom had the misfortune to expose herself to the nation on that meritorious platform known as the X Factor. Unfortunately for her she had neither the voice or the x factor – but what she did have the plus size factor and since appearing on that programme her and her family have been subjected to horrendous cyber bullying.

Contrast this with the Facebook group in support of the children’s television presenter who was deemed by some as being unfit to present to children as she only had one arm. For me it’s a bit like the deserving and undeserving poor – in the eyes of some if you are fat you offend the sensibilities of the great British public and therefore deserve your unjust desserts.